Li Bai李白（附）

Style & Daoist names

Taibai, Layman of the Green Lotus (Qinglian Jushi), the Banished Immortal

Period

Tang

Dates

701 — 762

Role

PoetRegister-Ordained Daoist Priest

Birthplace

Changlong, Mianzhou (present-day Jiangyou, Sichuan); alternatively Suyab

Places of activity

Mount Tiantai, Mount Song (Songshan)

Life

Li Bai, courtesy name Taibai, styled himself the "Green Lotus Lay Practitioner" (Qinglian Jushi), was a poet of the High Tang whose ties to Daoism ran deep. As a boy in Shu he "recited the Six Jia at age five and surveyed the hundred schools of thought at age ten," and lived in reclusion with the Daoist Dongyanzi on Mount Min. Around the age of twenty he encountered Sima Chengzhen at Jiangling, who told him he had "the air and bones of an immortal, fit to roam in spirit beyond the eight directions," prompting Li Bai to write the "Rhapsody on the Great Peng Encountering the Rare Bird." He associated with Yuan Danqiu, Wu Yun, He Zhizhang, and others, and the recommendations of Wu Yun and Princess Yuzhen were among the reasons he was appointed to await appointment in the Hanlin Academy in the first year of Tianbao (742). After leaving the capital in the third year of Tianbao (744), he went to the Ziji Palace in Qizhou (present-day Jinan) and received a ritual register from the Celestial Master Gao Rugui, formally becoming a Daoist priest — an event recorded in poems such as "Seeking the Dao at Anling, I Met Gai Huan Who Made Me a True Register; on Parting He Left Me This Poem." The abundant imagery of immortals, alchemy, and roaming to the immortal realms in Li Bai's poetry is directly connected to his Daoist faith. This entry is included as an appendix.

Contributions & Influence

• A representative High Tang poet who received a Daoist ritual register and became an ordained Daoist priest
• Brought Daoist immortal imagery to a peak in Tang poetry through his poems of roaming to the immortal realms

Works

• Collected Works of Li Taibai (Li Taibai Ji)

Legends

According to legend, Li Bai was an incarnation of the planet Venus (Taibai, the "Great White" star); and he is said to have drowned while drunk, reaching into the water to seize the moon's reflection.